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Tuesday, October 18, 2016

✈ ACI EUROPE: 2015 Airport Traffic Report

European airport trade association, ACI EUROPE released
its traffic report for 2015. This is the only air transport report which
includes all types of civil aviation passenger flights to and from Europe: full
service, low cost, charter and others.

Passenger traffic across the European airport network in
2015 grew by an average +5.2%.

At EU airports, the average increase in passenger traffic
was +5.6% with airports in Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Romania, Hungary,
Slovakia, Slovenia and Lithuania achieving double-digit growth. Meanwhile,
non-EU airports reported diminished growth of +3.9%. This was mainly due to a
significant decline in demand for air travel across Russian and Ukrainian
airports, as well as almost flat growth in Norway – despite a stellar increase
in passenger traffic in Iceland and sustained growth at most Turkish airports.

Freight traffic at Europe’s airports only grew by +0.7%,
as international trade remained subdued. Aircraft movements saw an increase of
+2.2%.

Olivier Jankovec, Director General ACI EUROPE said “2015
has been a very good year in terms of passenger traffic, with European airports
welcoming an estimated 1,95 billion passengers. 20% of them achieved a
double-digit increase and many broke new traffic records – mostly fueled by the
continued growth of low cost airlines and selected non-EU airlines. EU airports
generally performed extremely well, despite Germany and France being impacted
by airline & ATC strikes and the Paris terror attacks. Remarkably,
Istanbul-Atatürk airport became the 3rd busiest European airport with 61,8
million passengers, after London-Heathrow (74,9 million) and Paris-Charles de
Gaulle (65,7 million). It should be noted however that small regional airports*
across the continent underperformed the European average, with their passenger
volume only increasing by +3,8%. This is indicative of traffic growth becoming
more concentrated and less inclusive."

COMPARING 2008 AND 2015

Commenting on the air traffic recovery since the global
financial crisis, Jankovec added: “While the EU economy did not even grow by
+3% between 2008 and 2015, passenger traffic at EU airports increased by +13,6%
over the same period. Such a wide gap is pointing to a lasting discontinuity in
the usual relationship between GDP growth and passenger traffic performance.
This is reflective of new market dynamics, changing consumer behaviors and the
increased importance of air transport for the European economy.”

CURRENT OUTLOOK

Looking at the outlook for the coming months, Jankovec
concluded: “The positive momentum created by improving economic conditions in
the Eurozone, low oil prices and loose monetary policy is likely to persist for
most of 2016. This should help keep passenger traffic growing - except for
Russian airports. However, downside risks abound, and they are mainly of a
geopolitical nature – both homegrown and external. These range from the
unprecedented migration crisis and its repercussions on Schengen to the UK
Brexit, heightened terrorist threats, instability in the Middle East &
North Africa and deteriorating prospects in emerging markets."

BREAKDOWN BY TRAFFIC CATEGORY

Over the full year, airports welcoming more than 25
million passengers per year (Group 1), airports welcoming between 10 and 25
million passengers (Group 2), airports welcoming between 5 and 10 million
passengers (Group 3) and airports welcoming less than 5 million passengers per
year (Group 4) reported an average adjustment +3.7%, +6.3%, +7.1% and
+5.5%.

The airports which reported the highest increases in
passenger traffic during 2015 (compared with 2014) are as follows: